Walking the Dreamy, Divine, Rainy Routeburn with Kids and our Food Plan

We walked our first full length great walk with the kids over New Years and I thought some of you might be interested in the food we took.

It really was an unforgettable multi day excursion connecting to nature and such beautiful times with special people and it is definitely worth the effort coordinating a group to do a great walk - you will adore it, I promise. We were group of 9 including Kashi, Jasper, Laksmi and myself, my lil bro Vijay and dear friends from Christchurch and Auckland, Helaina, Matt, Pip and Dave.

So, I am not a tramping food expert but the idea of purchasing many tiny packets of freeze dried convenience hiking food for a family feels kind of incongruous with appreciating our great mother nature. I decided that if this is going to be a semi regular activity then we should make our own. I am also hoping this story will create some food adventure discussion and we all learn more!

I thought I would make our own dehydrated food and decided to just use begin by using the oven but I am sure the dehydrator would be really great and easier to control the temperature.

I really wanted to get the food sorted well in advance as the idea of packing for a family amidst a food dehydrating session sounds a dash stressful! About two weeks before our trip, I made some big pots of Mexican Spiced Beans, Brown Rice, Quinoa, Mung Dal and some roast Kumara, Carrot & Capsicum. We ate some for dinner and I saved some. These were all plant based options. It is recommended to dehydrate plant based options on their own and not to add ingredients such as cheese or meat as they can go bad quickly. I spread them thinly onto trays and put them into the oven at about 80 degrees and left it to dry out overnight - until it was 100% dry.

When cool, I mixed the Mexican beans, quinoa and rice together. The dal dried into huge irregular sized pieces, so I put it into food processor to get it all to one uniform size. This also meant it could rehydrate faster.

We also went for a practice overnight walk to the Jubilee Hut in the Silverpeaks to try out all the gear, to see how the kids would cope and so everyone could try out the dehydrated menu and to see how long it took to reconstitute.

See the top left photo: 1) In the bowl on the top left clockwise: Dehydrated Brown Rice, Mexican Beans with Roast Carrot & Capsicum, Quinoa & Dal 2) Tamari Nuts & Seeds 3) Dal & Beans with Quinoa & Rice 4) Muesli with Hazelnuts, Cranberries and Freeze Dried Boysenberries.

Our Food Plan

Daily Breakfast: Muesli, Coconut Milk Powder, Chopped Apple.

Day 1: Routeburn Shelter to Routeburn Flats 7.5Km (~2h). This was only a 2 hour walk in so we actually just brought in some left overs from our New Years feast.

Day 2: Routeburn Flats - Mackenzie Hut 21.1Km (~7h). We packed a decent lunch that was ready to hand to the kids at the lunch shelter (Harris Saddle). Others in the group had a cooked lunch, which took a lot longer to prepare. Lunch: Wraps with loads of yummy veggies, hummus, boiled egg, seeds. Dinner: Mexican Beans with Quinoa & Brown Rice, Salsa, Grated Carrot & Coriander Salad with Lemon & Tamari Nuts and Seeds.

Day 3: Spend the day at Mackenzie Hut.

Lunch: Pasta with Parmesan or Gluten/Dairy Free version. Dinner: Mung Dal, Quinoa & Brown Rice and a remake of Carrot, Coriander Salad with Lemon and Tamari nuts and seeds. (See Mung Dal Recipe).

Day 4: MacKenzie Hut to the Divide 12Km (4.5h).

When we stopped at Lake Howden we ate up whatever snacks, crackers, apples and carrots etc we had left.

Learnings

We definitely packed WAY too much fresh food. We might calm down on the fresh things. All those big and little things add up weight-wise, but it’s quite hard not to want to take extra emergency snacks in case a small person gets hungry on a very long walk!

Foods and Flavour Boosting Ingredients

We found these added a bit of fun:

Mrs Rogers Organic Garlic and Herb Salt, Tio Pablo Mexican Seasoning, Freeze Dried Little Beauties Boysenberries & Viberi Blackcurrants for adding to porridge/muesli situation, Fresh Lemons, Tamari Roasted Nuts and Seeds

Snack Food

We made a GF version of Coconut Crunch Slice, using ground almonds, coconut, tapioca and brown rice flours. A great traybake to share.

We also took apples, carrots, sesame snaps & chocolate!

Reconstitution of Dehydrated Foods

Mung Dal was a real winner in terms speed to reconstitute. This was because I blitzed it in the food processor so it was a uniform sized grainy powder. Click here for recipe. I reconstituted these meals in a pot so I could make it as delicious as I possibly could. I don’t think dehydrated food is as delicious as it could be when you only add boilng water to a packet, if you heat it in a pot it will fully reconstitute and you can add extra flavourings if you like as well.

Mexican Beans were also delicious. They did take longer to reconstitute due to the size of the kidney beans - perhaps around 30 min but that was all good. If you want this to be faster, add some boiling water to the mix as soon as you arrive at the hut and let it soak before heating it, this would definitely get things started. I also added some Tio Pablo Mayan Gold Spice mix towards the end.

Here are some rainy photos taken with our phones!

Lovely Adventure Foods

If you do need to buy some supplies, there are definitely some excellent freeze dried options available such as Radix Nutrition: they cater for numerous dietary preferences such as plant based/low FODMAP and Absolute Wilderness: - the Samoan Chocolate Pudding is pretty epic. The freeze dried meals are super lightweight if you are going on a longer mission, freeze dried foods rehydrate really quickly. Local Dehy is a Wanaka based company who make delicious vegan dehydrated range using compostable packaging. YUM Granola make really beautiful nutrient dense range granola, some entirely with NZ grown ingredients and sold in compostable packs and they refill containers for Nelson locals.

Staying two nights in the same hut

Helaina and Mat had the brilliant idea of booking 2 nights at MacKenzie Hut so that we could have one day that we weren’t rushing to get to the next hut. Perfect as our gear was drenched and this gave us a chance to dry it out, to enjoy the walks around Lake Mackenzie and to enjoy some reading and arts and crafts